When hazing becomes criminal

When does hazing become criminal hazing?
Well, when something has been going on for years and not be criminal, but something gets added to the mix. For example, with the soccer team in North Carolina, for years, students were drinking out of a pretzel can of beer. One particular year, a player who had come from Russia, added vodka to it. In that particular incident, two people nearly died; very, very close to death. In that incident would be a case where you've served alcohol to minors, but if somebody dies within it, you might have a manslaughter charge.
So what looks like innocuous hazing, can change if a single perpetrator changes the dynamics. That happens a lot. There have been drop offs in the country, I don't like it, but I guess it'll be okay. Then something has been added, as in Pierce College, where they took away the glasses of the young man who was dropped off in the country and he sailed over a cliff to his death.
Hazing changes very, very quickly from not so bad, to very bad in the hands of a single perpetrator or more. Some of the types of criminal hazing would be sexual hazing. I don't like the term, I think of it as more of a type of rape; serving alcohol to minors, serving great amounts of alcohol to minors, paddlings, beatings. There are many types of hazing that could be considered criminal. In all of these cases, they need to be reported to authorities, not just school authorities, but police authorities as well.

Hank Nuwer

Hazing Expert

Hank Nuwer is a writer and social critic who writes on the topic of hazing as an international human rights abuse issue and USA high school and campus safety issue. The State University of New York's Buffalo State College awarded him a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1999 and Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2006 for his long career as a hazing historian and researcher. His first investigative story on hazing appeared in 1978 for Human Behavior Magazine, including his groundbreaking interview on hazing as a form of Groupthink conducted with Groupthink theorist Irving Janis.

When does hazing become criminal hazing?
Well, when something has been going on for years and not be criminal, but something gets added to the mix. For example, with the soccer team in North Carolina, for years, students were drinking out of a pretzel can of beer. One particular year, a player who had come from Russia, added vodka to it. In that particular incident, two people nearly died; very, very close to death. In that incident would be a case where you've served alcohol to minors, but if somebody dies within it, you might have a manslaughter charge.
So what looks like innocuous hazing, can change if a single perpetrator changes the dynamics. That happens a lot. There have been drop offs in the country, I don't like it, but I guess it'll be okay. Then something has been added, as in Pierce College, where they took away the glasses of the young man who was dropped off in the country and he sailed over a cliff to his death.
Hazing changes very, very quickly from not so bad, to very bad in the hands of a single perpetrator or more. Some of the types of criminal hazing would be sexual hazing. I don't like the term, I think of it as more of a type of rape; serving alcohol to minors, serving great amounts of alcohol to minors, paddlings, beatings. There are many types of hazing that could be considered criminal. In all of these cases, they need to be reported to authorities, not just school authorities, but police authorities as well.